Issue #11

This week's AI prompt: Two tech business executive women speaking to each other, startup tech attire, somber conversation, digital illustration

Welcome to Issue #11! We took a week off after Thanksgiving while we made our way down from Mexico City to our next 1-month home in Medellin, Colombia. If you know any cool tech folks based here (or have recommendations for comida 🌮 or bebida 🍸 ), hit reply and let us know!

WHAT'S INSIDE

• 🗣 Never be afraid of feedback. Here’s some tips to make sure you consistently seek good feedback, even as you rise the ranks in your career

• 🎲 Feelin’ lucky? Let’s talk about the 4 types of luck and how you can design your daily life to increase your luck surface area

• 🔍 Lead Experiences & Programming at a16z, plus other great senior tech job openings

• ⚕️ Exercise tips from Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Andrew Huberman for longevity

• 🍿 Sports meets true crime in our watch recommendation of the week

A DEEPER DIVE: MAKING FEEDBACK A PRIORITY

Most of us say we appreciate feedback, but the reality can be very different. Have you ever given feedback to someone, only to find them turn cold or hostile in your future interactions? Or have you ever bristled when someone gave you feedback you didn’t like?

Feedback is the best way to improve and re-orient in personal and professional life. Here are two articles that give tips for creating a feedback-driven culture and ensuring that as a team leader you get good feedback with improvement in mind.

Top executives need feedback—here’s how they can get it

What it's about: Harvard Business School professor Robert S. Kaplan shares ways executives can solicit feedback from junior colleagues

TLDR / Key Takeaways

• Many executives find that as they become more senior, they receive less coaching and become more isolated from feedback concerning their performance and developmental needs. While it’s good to have processes such as board reviews and 360-degree feedback processes, supplementing these processes with additional feedback methods can be useful

• Seek coaching from your subordinates. “Interview” your direct reports, with the specific ask: “What advice would you offer to help me improve my effectiveness? Please give me one or two specific and actionable suggestions. I would appreciate your advice”. While your direct reports might avoid the question at first, by diving deeper on their responses, you can often uncover useful insights

• Consider running “clean sheet of paper” exercises. Ask your teammates to consider what the business would look like if started from scratch today, in the current broader competitive and market context. This can help uncover bold recommendations to workflows, culture, product, and other organizational changes that can inform broader strategy and direction

How leaders can get honest productive feedback

What it's about: Jennifer Porter, a leadership and team development coach, shares tips for leaders to gather useful feedback

TLDR / Key Takeaways

According to research on effective learning, to improve performance, people need three things:

1. A clear goal

2. A genuine desire to achieve that goal

3. Feedback that indicates what they are doing well and what they are not doing well

The type of feedback you receive and how its delivered is important. Low-quality feedback is not useful, positive feedback is undervalued, and negative feedback delivered unskilfully can have residual negative effects on you and your relationships. The tips below help improve the quality and delivery effectiveness of feedback:

• Build and maintain a psychologically safe environment by being curious, rewarding candor, and showing vulnerability. These qualities can be shown by listening to and genuinely exploring your colleagues’ different, and possibly risky, perspectives — even if you disagree with them. Also, acknowledging your weaknesses or mistakes along the way is a great way to be open and vulnerable

• Be intentional with how you ask for feedback. Rather than asking generally “what feedback you have for me”, try to make the question more targeted. Ask about specific events (“What did you hear when I shared my strategy?”), worrisome patterns (“How often do I interrupt people in meetings?”), and personal impact (“How did it feel to you when I sent that email?”)

• Look for actionable detail in feedback, both positive and negative. While general positive feedback can be good for morale, it’s more helpful to ongoing performance if you you can pinpoint behaviors that should be reinforced. So when someone gives blanket praise (”you did great in the presentation!”) dive deeper to understand what someone appreciated and what behaviors you should continue

• Treat feedback sessions as valued time. Eliminate distractions such as Slack or your phone when you are soliciting feedback. Repeat or summarize the feedback you receive to acknowledge understanding. Control your emotions and avoid debating or challenging the person giving feedback in the moment. Show gratitude to the person delivering the feedback

• Reflect on the feedback given and create a plan. After you’ve received the feedback and gathered other data points, if necessary, identify what an improvement looks like and put together discrete steps to get there. Making a plan and taking action are not only important for your learning and development, they also signal to those who shared the feedback that you are serious about improving and you value their perspectives

• Sustain progress and share updates. Go back to your feedback providers and share what you’re doing differently, which will help them evolve their perspectives and validate that you heard and appreciated what they had to say

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: FOUR FLAVOURS OF LUCK

Way back in 2007 — 15 (!) years ago — venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote a compelling blog post about luck. In it, he breaks down the theory neurologist and philosopher Dr. James Austin has on the four types of luck. If you understand these well, you just might be able to create a bit of luck of your own.

For: Finding opportunity

What is it: A framework for thinking about different sources of luck

When it’s used: To think about how to maximize your exposure to lucky situations

When it’s NOT used: Luck is, by definition, uncontrollable. So don’t take any action that puts you personally, professionally, or financially at unacceptable levels of risk in the hope of garnering luck

Luck, or ‘chance’, is defined by Dr. Austin as “something fortuitous that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention”. Even though there’s no prior intent directly involved in creating the lucky break, there are steps one can take beforehand to increase the probability of encountering lucky opportunities. As Big Sean once said “I guess it took ten years for me to be an overnight success”.

So let’s talk about the four different types of luck:

1. Random Chance - A lot of your prospects in life are influenced by things entirely out of your control. Your nationality, your family, your parents, all of these things are part of the cosmic lottery that you didn’t have any control over. There are some types of luck that are completely accidental, and you get to benefit from being at the right place at the right time

2. Experimental Motion - Luck is also influenced by exposure. Using baseball terminology, the more ‘at bats’ you have, the more likely you are to eventually hit a home run. By continuing to place yourself in new situations, meet new people, and learn new things, you create more opportunities for luck

3. Perceptual Awareness - Can you train yourself to identify luck? Well, if luck is the pursuit of the exceptional outlier, this is core to the career of venture capitalists, college admissions officers, and recruiters around the world. As they say, “Chance favors the prepared mind”, and luck can be influenced by knowing how to spot it and being ready when it comes around

4. Magnetism - The best kind of luck is when you can create your own, though that’s easier said than done. Your unique attributes set the stage for certain types of luck. Your relationships, skills, and expertise influence the types of lucky opportunities that come to you

So now that you know these different types of luck, how can you increase your ‘luck surface area’ for maximum exposure?

• Develop a bias towards action - Lean into new opportunities, take pride in experimentation, and take a genuine interest in actively building relationships with others from all walks of life

• Cultivate a curious mindset - While a logical and analytical mindset is certainly useful at times, when you’re open to solutions and curious about the world, you invite more serendipity

• Build a personal brand - Cultivate your passions and find your tribe. If you can be known by someone who is interested and interesting (or engaged and engaging), people will keep you in mind when new opportunities arise that fit your passion areas. Even better if you can leverage social media to share your passions, since this gives you broader distribution and makes it easier to find those who are interested in the same things as you

YOUR NEXT STRIDE

Here are our 5 top jobs of the week! If you want to share an open role, please use this form

• Director, Experiences & Programming a16z. Venture capital firm with over $35B in assets under management across multiple funds. Role will lead the experiential side of communities.📍US, Remote

• Director, Product Marketing eko. SaaS company with a shoppable video platform that drives deep engagement through interactive video experiences. Role will build product marketing function from the ground up - driving demand, usage and business impact of new and existing eko products. Raised $61M. Backed by Intel Capital, NEA, and Sequoia.📍New York

• VP Revenue Slice. Empowers local, independent pizzerias with modern tools. By uniting these small businesses with specialized technology, marketing, data, and services, Slice enables them to serve their digitally-minded customers and move away from 3rd party apps. Role oversees a global sales, post-sales and enablement organization. Series D. Total funding: $125M. Backed by Cross Creek, KKR, and Primary Ventures.📍US, Remote

• Chief Marketing Officer Omada Health. Virtual chronic condition care management company. Role will build and lead a differentiated brand for Omada and its virtual care programs in Diabetes, Hypertension, Diabetes Prevention, Musculoskeletal, and Behavioral Health. Series E. Total funding: $448M. Backed by aMoon, Civilization Ventures, and Perceptive Advisors.📍US, Remote

• VP Talent Primary Venture Partners. Seed-stage venture capital firm investing in NYC. Portfolio includes Jet, Chief, Mirror, K Health, Noom, and more. Raised $425M across two funds in Sep ‘22. Role will build scalable talent programs that enable dozens of pioneering founders to build their first teams as well as scale and optimize their talent acquisition function. 📍New York, Hybrid

OFF HOURS

Wellness 🏅

Best Exercises for Overall Health & Longevity This video by Dr. Peter Attia & Dr. Andrew Huberman features insights on which exercises support longevity.

Watch 📺

Bad Sport When sports meets true crime. This documentary follows six controversies in the sports world with firsthand accounts from people involved

Read 📚

The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama. Following up on her best-selling memoir Becoming, Michelle Obama offers readers a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power in The Light We Carry.

Listen 🎧

If you’re a history buff, or if you just like learning about interesting leaders from the past, How to Take Over the World by Ben Wilson is a great podcast with engaging storytelling. One of our favourites is the 2-part episode on Walt Disney

Doing Good ❤️

Malaria still kills over 600,000 people annually! 🦟 The Malaria Consortium improves health in Africa and Asia through evidence-based programs that combat targeted diseases and promote universal health coverage.

If there are any causes that you're involved with, let us know and we'll feature it!

RANDOM BUT INTERESTING

This section is going to feature one material a week that we found interesting - but couldn’t really fit it in anywhere else. You can think of it as coming down the rabbit hole of curiosity with us just because — or fodder / anecdotes for your next speech 🤷🏽‍♀️

Do you struggle to keep on top of your email? Check out this cool tweet thread by entrepreneur Jesse Pujji on how he processes 50k+ emails per year.

SHARE THE LOVE

That’s all for this week. Have a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ week ahead!

If you've liked what you've read, share with your friends - https://stride-newsletter.beehiiv.com/ ✨

👋🏽

​Jay & Zi